About La Cosa Nostra in New York. Starts in the 1970's and then jumps from gangster to gangster in the 5 families. It's a very late start as they miss the first decades of the mafia, but it still works. One thing I missed was an Italian intro. All these guys are Italian men. But this whole mafia was lead from Italy in many ways and we get no info on that. The American mafia decided to organize themselves just like the Italian counterpart. Same traditions, cultural norms, hierarchy, and roles. Everything is the same. But now it's in USA so there is 10 times as much surveillance. In Italy the mafia just bought their way out of prison or killed so many judges and mayors that the judges would just keep setting them free up till the 90's. And in some ways it continues. In USA it's different. Once the state comes after you you are gone. That's it. The state institutions have too much money and they have protected buildings. You can't just whack them. There are too many centers for prosecutors. Too many cops too.
This is about how the mafia in New York slowly eased into the spotlight. First in the 1970's. There are 5 mafia families with 5 top bosses who meet in a commision and decide who lives or dies and how much money who needs to pay. One boss decides to follow the 1970's progressive culture and proclaim that Italians are discriminated against. He protests publicly. That's enough spotlight so that he is killed. Mobsters and families fight for power and once you get into the open or threaten someone you are a target. Especially the first episode is a mess. It's a terrible watch. It's jarring and overedited to an extreme. It jumps from place to place and you can see that an episode had ads every 10 minutes so the episodes constantly repeat what was said every 10 minutes or so. It's so jarring and obnoxious. Terrible editing.
But in episode 2 is slows a bit down as it's about 1 single story. So the editing doesn't fully ruin it. FBI agent named Donnie Brasco infiltrated one of the families on a low level. After 6 years he's told to kill a guy to become a member of the family. FBI pulls him out and it makes the mafia kill his mafia friend who brought him in to them. This is the initial start to the police tracking down everything. Donnie Brasco creates a very simple overview of how it all works. He proves it's a mafia. The thing is, before this the mafia insisted mafia was not a real thing. Both in USA and Italy. They said that the mafia movies were fake and offensive to Italians. Even up till the 90's they tried to say this.
We move over to the Philadelphia wars. Philadelphia is still controlled by a New York family. So it's part of that regime as the city is just nearby. By mistake a mafia mobster kills the peaceful boss. He thinks it will give him the power, but instead he and his crew gets killed. You can't kill a mafia boss without a go ahead from the top family bosses. These killings always lead to a fight for power. Especially as some of the old leaders refused to deal drugs. The newcomers kill off old leaders to get into the drug trade and take full control. With casinos now being legal in Atlantic city the mafia there also takes over all construction unions and creates some companies that will always get contracts as otherwise things "may go wrong". Overall these stories feel like proper mafia stories.
Episode 4 is about U. S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Rudolph Giuliani. The later Trump guy. Often the leaders fall in 2 ways. They either write a book about their live or they threaten to kill someone without getting to it making the other guy go to the cops. Here a family mafia boss wrote a book about his life and even included a mafia hierarchy list. He later even did a 60 Minute interview. Quite different from some mafia bosses that have not been photographed for 10 to 60 years. Giuliani uses the list to use a RICO law to go after all 5 families at once. It's an anti-mob law. They bug basically everything. Houses, cars, clubs, meeting places. They get recordings on all their plans and all the meetings or discussions about them. They arrest all leaders. This is the end of the old mafia.
Episode 5 is about John Gotti. He sees weakness after the many arrests. Finally this violent drug dealer sees his chance. He himself is about to get killed for dealing drugs without an allowance. He kills a family boss and takes this spot. He loves the spotlight and constantly talks to the media. Obviously the other families want to kill him for killing a boss. But they keep trying to kill each other and instead a bunch of lower ranked mobsters die. They have a truce. Gotti is stupid though. He talks about past murders and whatnot. As soon as his meeting place is bugged he goes away for life. Also, 2 cops are hired by a family trying to kill Gotti. These cops kill for them. A family leader is about to come clean about everything, but as he has killed too many people the prosecutors refuse to make a deal with him. So the 2 cops and tens of other people go free. One of the 2 cops writes a book about working for the mafia. He's recognized and finally goes to prison for life. Again, another book.
Episode 6 is about a mob crew. 7 kid friends grow up together. They do small jobs for the rich mobsters. They work together and want to get big in the mafia. But they are proper fools. When they grow up they start killing wrong people and even kill a group member for pushing a mafia boss. The group is a disaster. At this point mafia mobsters are ready to testify left and right. It was unheard of in the start 80's. Now it's the norm. Even a family boss becomes a snitch. Basically, as soon as they get caught they snitch as fast as possible in the 90's. The old mafia is dead. A family boss becomes a Wall Street criminal. But with snitches everywhere he soon falls too. Even though this sort of crime is not deadly. Mafia is dead. As soon as the old generation was imprisoned and the younger generation got more power too fast there was no way to make them all understand the culture of not talking to the cops. They don't understand the mafia. They were in it for the money only and nothing else. There is no one to educate them and they just screw up and get arrested.
Overall a good show. I was angry at first at the horrible editing. But after a while you kinda get used to it. It's not ideal, but I must admit that the interviews with cops and former mobsters are great. And they even act out scenes and have old photos. It's pretty good. I was irritated about them having removed all faces from the photos except for the mobsters etc. But overall I feel like it was a proper overview and a good history lesson. The Italian mafia was way bigger and more important, but this was cool. Ugly but informative.
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